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Connecticut Democrats To Rell -- Checkmate!
by user Don Pesci “There are reality checks when you put a fiscal note to a bill,” said Democrat House Speaker James Amann. “There are some ideas that are so unattainable, so far out of reach, that you have to have a reality check.” Mr. Amann was referring to Universal Health Care, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. The price tag put on the legislative bill for Universal Health Care by the Connecticut ’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis is about $18 billion, a number that sent chills up and down the spines of some legislators and the not easily spooked members of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association. “Even we were quite shocked by the enormity of the cost. ... A lot of people are just scratching their heads and saying, ‘Wow!’” said CBIA associate council Eric George. The $18 billion figure is just a touch more than Connecticut ’s two year budget. But not everyone was scratching their heads and placing their hands over their wallets, mumbling as they did so, “Neither our wallets or our lives are safe while the legislature is in session.” Mr. Donald Williams, the President Pro Tem of the state senate was raciocinating. “On the one hand,” he pondered, “$17 billion seems staggering, and it is. At the same time, the Connecticut Business Policy Council estimated that in Connecticut we spend $22 billion on health care costs each year - and that was in 2004 - for 3.5 million people.” Mr. Williams is a fan of a single payer system, a euphemism for state socialized medicine. And he wasn’t ready to throw in the sponge. "No state has done what I would like to see us do,” said Mr. Williams, “which is to have a Medicare-for-all type system," a euphemism for state socialized medicine. Williams added ominously, "It will be difficult to get it all done this year." Having said "It will be difficult to get it all done this year" – “it” being a $18 billion boost in taxes to pay for a universal health insurance plan – Williams gave us a peek into the future when Democrats recently unfurled their battle standard, a budget, heavily progressivized, that punishes smokers, many of whom tend to be poor, the Democrat’s version of a “millionaire,” and anyone earning more than $200,000 a year, while it rewards those in lower income brackets and people living in whatever towns Democrats have chosen to lard with benefices. When the state income tax was but a gleam in Lowell Weicker’s eye, then governor Weicker was faced with a difficulty in passing the tax through a legislature more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats than the present arrangement. So the boys and gals wrote a cap on spending into the tax plan, lately busted by Governor Jodi “I am willing to negotiate” Rell, and produced a nearly flat income tax. The semi-progressive income tax had always disturbed Democrats, and now that they have achieved a veto-proof majority in the legislature, they have pounced on a weak ideologically compromised governor. If Rell did not object to a cap busting increase in educational funding, what principle could she legitimately put forward to serve as a firewall against Democrat pretensions that the additional marginal rates they wish to add to the tax structure brings “fairness” to budget collections? Actually, it brings divisive politics to budget allocations and opens the tap to further spending. Once you have decided to rob rich Peter to pay poor Paul, you will increase proportionally Paul’s tendency to consume Peter’s wages. In a democracy, those who have less will always want more in services – when they find they do not have to pay for them. When the founders of the nation wrote about the tyranny of the majority in democracies, they had in mind, among other things, the ability of the majority to vote money out of the wallets of a minority. The real danger in a steeply progressive tax is that the majority that consumes services is able to expand its appetite without paying a penalty for over consumption. Of course, those who foot the bills an improvident legislature puts before them can always move to other less predatory states, and rankings provided by the Yankee Institute showing Connecticut 47th in population growth, 41st in real personal-income growth, and dead last in job creation throughout the recession in the early 90’s indicate that the exodus has begun. The Democrat spending and allocation plan is a John DeStefano budget administered by a governor who defeated DeStefano in the late gubernatorial campaign and fashioned by a veto-proof legislature that has just checkmated Mrs. Rell __NOEDITSECTION__ Category: Opinions Category: Opinions by User Don Pesci Category: April 15, 2007 Category: DeStefano Opinions Category: Rell Opinions Category: Weicker Opinions Category: Williams Opinions Category: Yankee Institute Opinions From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki. From The Opinion Wiki, a Wikia wiki.